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After an intense debate and at least five hours of discussion, the Constitutional Court raised its plenary session this Wednesday at 7:28 at night, and did not reach a decision to define whether or not to grant the former Minister of Agriculture Andrés Felipe Arias the possibility to challenge the ruling that in 2014 sentenced him to 17 years in prison.
On that date, Arias was condemned by the Criminal Chamber for the Agro Ingreso Seguro corruption case in which, according to the high court file, landowners and large agribusinesses ended up benefiting from subsidies that were for small farmers and peasants.
The high court reviewed this Wednesday the tutelage that Arias had filed against the Supreme Court of Justice and that was denied three times by that high court (by its Criminal, Civil and Labor chamber), in which the former minister asked to be given the possibility to challenge that conviction.
(Also read: What would be the effect of allowing Arias to contest his sentence?)
This is because the conviction in his case was given only once, since those were the rules of the game that the Constitution and the laws allowed at that time for graduates. At that time the constitutional graduates (such as magistrates, prosecutors, ministers, governors, etc.) were convicted in the sole instance under the guarantee of being judged by a collegiate body of the highest criminal jurisdiction; the Criminal Cassation Chamber.
Although the Supreme Court of Justice had denied him guardianship considering that his ruling was already a matter of res judicata, and that he was convicted with the laws that were in force and that prevented a second instance, in the Constitutional Court some magistrates consider that Arias should be recognized the right to double compliance, that is, to challenge that conviction so that a second judge confirms that sentence or knocks it down.
The high court evaluated in its session the presentation presented by the judge Diana Fajardo, which would go in the way of protecting the right of Arias to challenge his ruling. However, despite the intense debate, the magistrates were unable to decide whether the majority accepted this proposal for a ruling or not.
Since 2014, the high court has recognized this guarantee, recalling that it is a right ordered by the international system. Even in the case of Arias, the UN Human Rights Committee ruled in 2018 asking the State to allow him a second review of his sentence.
All these elements could play in favor of the former minister. In at least three previous rulings, the Constitutional Court had ordered Congress to legislate to create a regulation and normative that allows people to be able to have a double conformity (that two different judges find that someone is guilty) and a double instance (that a judge can review the first sentence issued by another). By that order in 2018, Congress issued the double instance law that created two new rooms in the Supreme Court so that graduates could challenge their decisions. But that law was not retroactive, so it did not take into account cases like that of Arias.
(We recommend: How feasible is it that the Court allows you to review Arias’ sentence?)
In other decisions, the Constitutional Court had granted the double instance to former senator Martín Emilio Morales Diz, whose conviction was issued in 2018. And in a tutela filed by a councilor who had been convicted in 2016, despite having been acquitted in the first instance, the high court ordered double compliance. Based on rulings like Morales’, the Supreme Court, on its own motion, decided to grant double instance to convicts in single instance after 2018, such as former anti-corruption prosecutor Luis Gustavo Moreno, or former senator Bernardo Miguel ‘el Ñoño’ Elías.
In the Arias case, it is the first time that the Constitutional Court would rule on a guardianship of someone convicted before 2018. That date is key because, according to the records of the Supreme Court of Justice, at least 230 people were convicted in only instance until that moment in which the law was changed.
If the Court were to grant what Arias asks, a door could be opened so that all those convicted by the Supreme Court – in cases such as political court, bullshit, parapolitical – can interpose guardianships and argue that they must also be favored with a challenge of His sentence.
JUSTICE
